Contemporary Analog and Digital Color Photographic Prints: Processes, Practice, and Accelerated Test Methods for Evaluating Print Permanence
November 20, 2015
About the Lecture:
Henry Wilhelm holding a test target
The first high-quality digital photographic printing processes entered the market in the late 1980s, and today it is believed that more than 99% of the world's photographic prints are being produced with digital color and monochrome processes. Included are modern digital prints made from scans or digital camera captures of original color and black-and-white negatives and transparencies, from glass plate negatives, and scans made from historical and other previously made prints.
The twelve major current digital photographic print processes will be discussed, including UV-curable printing and a new inkjet sublimation thermal dye transfer process for printing on large, specially coated aluminum panels. Recent developments in aqueous pigment inkjet printers using newly developed inks with enhanced permanence will be described, including the important continuing role of silver-halide-dye (chromogenic) color prints and their gradual replacement with pigment inkjet, electrophotographic, and dye inkjet systems.
Exhibitions by fine art photographers Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Elger Esser, will be used to illustrate various printing processes. Accelerated test methods for evaluating the permanence of photographic prints, and the role of ISO and industry-developed test methods in the marketplace will be discussed in relation to the development of improved permanence test methods.
Speaker:
Henry Wilhelm is president and director of research at Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. Wilhelm has authored or co-authored more than 25 technical papers that focus on permanence testing, the stability of traditional and digital color photographs, and the long-term preservation of photographic collections and holds two U.S. Patents for the design of archival washers for black-and-white fiber base prints. He was one of the founding members of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Committee IT-3 and developed the ANSI IT9.9-1990 image stability test methods standard. For the past 25 years he has served as Secretary of the group and co-project leader of the Indoor Light Stability Test Methods Technical Subcommittee of ISO WG-5/TG-3.
In 1966, Wilhelm served as an assistant to Ansel Adams, which further increased his interest in the long-term preservation of photographs. In the early 1980s, he served as volunteer technical advisor to film director Martin Scorsese in his successful efforts to persuade motion picture film manufacturers to improve the dark storage permanence of their products and to promote cold-storage technology for the preservation of color and black-and-white motion picture films. Wilhelm received a one-year Guggenheim Fellowship in 1981 for what became a ten-year study of color print fading and staining under low-level tungsten illumination that simulates museum display conditions. With contributing author Carol Brower Wilhelm, he wrote The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures, published in 1993.
Wilhelm is the recipient of the Photoimaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA) “2007 Lifetime Achievement Award” for his work on the evaluation of the permanence of traditional and digital color prints. In May 2011, Wilhelm received an honorary Doctor of Sciences Degree from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa.
